Categories: OLD Media Moves

Judge rules against blogger, says she isn’t a journalist

A U.S. District Court judge ruled that a blogger must pay $2.5 million to an investment firm she wrote about because she isn’t a real journalist.

Peter Pachal of Mashable writes, “Judge Marco A. Hernandez said Crystal Cox, who runs several blogs, wasn’t entitled to the protections afforded to journalists — specifically, Oregon’s media shield law for sources — because she wasn’t ‘affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.’

“The Obsidian Finance Group sued Cox in January for $10 million for writing several blog posts critical of the company and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Obsidian argued that the writing was defamatory. Cox represented herself in court.

“The judge threw out all but one of the blog posts cited, focusing on just one (this one), which was more factual in tone than the rest of her writing. Cox said that was because she was being fed information from an inside source, whom she refused to name.

“Without the source, she couldn’t prove the information in the post was true — and thus, according to the judge, she didn’t qualify for Oregon’s media shield law since she wasn’t employed by a media establishment. In the court’s eyes, she was a blogger, not a journalist. The penalty: $2.5 million.”

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joebanana says:
October 29, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Key word, "network", Ever heard of freelance journalism? Anybody can be a journalist, well, anybody that can write. The definition of journalist is someone who writes in a journal. It doean't have to be a syndicated journal, or a major metropolitan newspaper. Freedom of speech is at play here also. "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the press. So this judge just pulls this "law" out of his ass, and enforces it? I didn't read anything about the $2.5 million in damage this blogger caused this entity. Or the original $10 million. That's a lot of unproven damages. Back to the "slander", "defamation", "libel", where's the proof? In fact this state has a law that contradicts this insane judge.